Geological Problems with Noah’s Flood
- stephenstrent7
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
The major problems with a universal flood for geology are even more numerous than for the man-made structures just described.
Limestone, such as the calcarenite discussed in the previous post, is formed over millions of years from sand-sized grains of calcium carbonate (calcite or aragonite) and/or calcium magnesium carbonate (dolomite). Most limestone has a biotic origin: formed from the shells or exoskeletons of marine organisms such as clams, snails, corals, and calcareous algae, including diatoms; most species of which are now extinct. Some limestone is abiotic, either precipitating directly out of water, or evaporating from lakes or hot springs.1
The calcareous grains slowly become cemented together, under pressure; by dissolution, recrystallization, and dehydration; in a process called lithification, forming rock in various marine and non-marine environments, such as coastal dunes and beaches. In short, limestone does not form in floods. Furthermore, if all the organisms that formed all the Earth’s limestone had been alive at the same time, billions of microscopic marine organisms would have formed an immense organic volume just before the Flood, in a far greater concentration than any known living marine population—turning the entire ocean green or red (such as in a red tide). Rough estimates put the amount of calcium carbonate in the limestone of the entire earth’s crust, derived from the shells of living organisms, at tens of millions of cubic miles. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say 32 million cubic miles. The percent of the living organisms’ weight consisting of the shell is about 30-50%, making the entire biomass of the living organisms in the primordial seas around 64 to 96 million cubic miles. The total ocean volume today is 321 million cubic miles. If all the clams, snails, corals, and calcareous algae that have contributed to the limestone on earth today were living at the same time—just before a global flood, they would account for around 20 to 30% of the entire ocean volume—making it a very dense soup. A “red tide” is not always red. It may be red, brown, or green, depending on the type of algae involved. Even in a red tide, the algae-to-seawater ratio is extremely small, typically measuring less than 0.001% total algae by volume. Having clams, snails, corals, and calcareous algae accounting for 20-30% of the ocean volume would make it a red tide on one-hundred-fold steroids—I’m not even sure people could wade through such a soup, or boats could sail through it. Such a scenario would also involve an impossibly rapid deposition rate, in still water, not in churning flood water, far exceeding any condition known in Earth’s history, and a drastically different ocean chemistry.2
Sand forms, over millions of years, when fine grains are broken away from rocks, shells, or coral by wind, water or ice weathering; by plant roots; or by erosion from moving water. The latter process can be seen on any sandy beach where little pebbles roll up and down the shore as endless ocean waves come in and out. Those sand grains may become deposited up to 600 feet deep in the Sahara Desert.3
If all the sand on all the earth’s beaches and deserts would have been washed away and redispersed by a global flood; then the meticulous process of little pebbles rolling up and down beaches, which, according to our knowledge of geology, has been going on for millions of years, instead, would have taken only 4364 years.
Sandstone is formed when sand grains are deposited together by wind or water, and then buried and compacted under immense pressure from overlying sediments. Then, over millions of years, minerals such as silica (quartz), iron oxide (hematite), and/or calcium carbonate (calcite or dolomite); dissolved in water, percolate through the spaces between the grains of sand and precipitate there, acting as a natural cement that binds the grains together through lithification, gradually transforming the previously loose sand grains into solid sandstone. Again, this process does not occur under flood conditions.4
Deposits of coal, in some cases, two miles or more beneath the earth’s surface, are derived from huge forests that once covered the earth. The plants of those forests were buried by thousands of feet of earth over millions of years. All these processes, according to the Young-Earth Creationists’ concept of a global flood, required only 4364 years. Apparently, all the dinosaur-age tree fossils formed (magically) in 4364 years.5
The formation of oil began in warm, shallow oceans around 65-540 million years ago. Microscopic dead animals, called zooplankton, plants, called phytoplankton, and bacteria fell to the ocean floor. The dead plankton and bacteria mixed with inorganic, clay-like material brought into the ocean by rivers. That mixture created an organic-rich mud, which can only form in still water environments. Over millions of years, heat and pressure in the Earth’s crust transform that buried organic-rich mud into oil or gas.6
Young-Earth Creationists would have us believe that that organic-rich mud was formed by the Flood only 4365 years ago. That is truly amazing—especially when one considers that some of the oil reserves are 10,000 feet or more below the earth’s surface. The problem is even worse because oil was used in the Babylonian and Persian empires, starting around 626 BC, giving that oil production time of only1722 years. If that is the case, unless God has changed the laws of nature since 2348 BC, which I do not believe, for the God I worship does not change;7 plankton falling to the ocean floor in 295 AD could be a source of oil today.
References
1. Boggs, Sam, Principles of Sedimentology and Stratigraphy, 4th ed, Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2006
2. Ibid
4. Boggs, 2006
6. Donev, Jason, Oil formatio, Energy Edication, University of Calgary; energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Oil_formation
7. Malachi 3:6
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